Listening to President Bush’s inaugural address, with its clarion call for the spread of liberty, the echo of John F. Kennedy was faint but clear. But against the backdrop of the lofty rhetoric and grand promises, the question becomes: How to accomplish all this? The answer is that the second Bush administration will have to make ample use of “soft power.”

“Soft power,” in international relations parlance, refers to the power to attract – to obtain allegiance and achieve ambitions without military might or “hard power.” In recent years, soft power has been championed chiefly by a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, Joseph S. Nye Jr.

Half a dozen policy prescriptives, if followed in the next four years, will deploy soft power to the best advantage of America and the world.

First, tone it down. Soft power means speaking softly, however big your stick is. Mr. Bush has said he regrets “bring ’em on” and “dead or alive.” As he did at the inauguration, the president should stay statesmanlike – and so should the rest of the administration.

Secondly, broaden the perspective. Certainly, the terrorist attacks of September 11 were horrible, the fight against terrorists is vital, and armed force is crucial, but America has manifold international goals: Priority must be given to pressing global issues such as human poverty and sustainable development, where soft power is the solution of choice.

Pursuing this broader agenda means realizing that liberty is not the sole objective: The dilemma of human governance, now as ever, is the proper balance between freedom and order. Nor is democracy the objective: Democracy is a means, not an end in itself, and needs to be adopted judiciously, or risk the tyranny of the majority. Promoting democracy will succeed better through example and influence – soft power – than forced regime change.

Thirdly, engage civil society. During the first Bush administration, with its hard power proclivities, the world beyond government was largely alienated from international policy formation and execution. Listen to the think tanks. Ask help and advice from the private sector and nongovernmental organizations: after all, the nongovernmental organizations were first on the scene after the tsunami. Civil society does some things better than states. Globalization and the information revolution have changed the role of nonstate actors in international affairs. They are the instruments of choice to help frame and deploy soft power.

Fourth, reintegrate with Europe. America and Europe constitute Western civilization, in Winston Churchill’s phrase: “all that we know and care for.” The Cold War was won by America and Europe acting as one. Political and societal differences of the moment must not erode our shared core values throughout the vast sweep of history.

Europe harbors the ideal of making peace a natural outcome and force an undesirable option. The European Union was founded in 1951 by beating swords into ploughshares, as the European Coal and Steel Community, which placed continental Europe’s war making capacity under joint authority. Willingness to agree, to listen, to see the other’s point of view, is how Europe works. On February 22, Mr. Bush goes to Brussels, an excellent opportunity to gauge firsthand the strength and skill of Europe’s soft power.

The “power to attract” of the European Union in the contested elections in Ukraine is a vivid instance of soft power in action. The desire of a majority of Ukrainians to be legitimate, democratic Europeans meant that President Kuchma had to accept the intervention of E.U. Foreign Affairs Commissioner Javier Solana and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski in the internal electoral affairs of the country. That could not have been imposed at the point of a gun.

In Iran, America should follow Europe’s soft power lead. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have negotiated the beginning of a nuclear settlement with the regime. Underground, Iranian youth is open to the West. For America to use hard power by bombing in Iran – worst of all, through an Israeli proxy – as described in Seymour Hersh’s article in the current New Yorker, would stiffen the regime and demoralize the youth, where soft power could achieve the opposite.

Fifth, obey Micah: “Walk humbly with thy God.” When, 175 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote “Democracy in America,” he remarked on Americans’ trumpeting of their country’s divine status and their repeated invocation of their relationship with their Creator. For many people in the West, however, faith is a private matter. In Europe, secularization has resulted from more just and caring societies, a lesson in soft power in the domestic sphere. Other civilizations can be as easily insulted as impressed by American attempts at religious inclusiveness, such as Mr. Bush’s references to the Koran in his inaugural speech. Soft power can repel as well as attract.

Last but not least, give it time. Soft power works slowly. Hear the echo, once again, faint but clear: “All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the lifetime of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin …”

Mr. Dungan is an associate fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House in London and president of Dungan Associates LLC, an international business consultancy.